News of: Tuesday, 1st of May, 2012

Front Page

Amid raids and arrests, senior BNP leaders have gone into hiding, as the government's sudden tough stance against the opposition's continuous agitation yesterday sent panic sweeping through the ranks of the 18-party alliance.

The ruling Awami League and the main opposition BNP have adopted conflicting policies against each other. The AL has decided to counter the ongoing BNP agitation while the opposition is determined to oust the government at any cost.

The government machinery has no clue about the whereabouts of M Ilias Ali. The opposition clearly thinks political turmoil on the streets will bring about the change it has ardently desired over these past three years and more. The security forces would have you know that all moves to locate the missing BNP politician have been thwarted by these hartal programmes of the opposition.

Chevron Bangladesh yesterday launched the country's first-ever gas compressor station in Habiganj, enabling the pressure constrained national grid to supply an additional 50 million cubic feet of gas per day.

The railway probe body investigating the railwaygate scandal will interrogate tomorrow BGB members involved in detaining former railway minister Suranjit Sengupta's APS, his driver and two top officials of railway.

Editorial

It seems that the government has lost its sense of proportion, a precarious state to be in for a government that is led by the oldest party in the country. It is difficult to conclude otherwise from the absurd step it has chosen to take several opposition leaders to court for creating violence during hartal on Sunday

How far have we come from this day in 1886 USA, when police killed several people after firing on workers demonstrating for the eight-hour workday? Since the riots on this day some years later, since demonstrations for workers' rights every year since then -- how much have things changed?

Sports

Kazi Salahuddin vowed to complete the promised tasks in the next four years after he got the mandate to run the country's football in a festive Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) elections where he was elected the president for the second term unopposed.

Abdus Salam Murshedy retained his senior vice-president's post while two out of the four incumbent vice-presidents also retained their posts in the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) elections yesterday.

The thirteenth edition of the National Cricket League ended in exactly the same way the last three editions ended, and in a broader sense the last twelve. Regrettably, the absolute apathy by the organisers towards first-class cricket leaves many questions hanging with very few answers in response.

Gautam Gambhir scored a half-century as the Kolkata Knight Riders beat the Chennai Super Kings by five wickets as game 41 of the Indian Premier League went down to the wire at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium here Monday.

When it comes to sporting the name of their favourite Premier League player on the back of a replica shirt, Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney is officially the most popular choice of fans around the world.

Former Pakistan captain Mohammad Yousuf has dismissed the impressions that he is trying to enter the national squad through a 'shortcut', saying he will continue the hard work and wait until his turn comes to play for his country again.

Sprinter Dwain Chambers and cyclist David Millar will be eligible to compete for Britain at the London Games after the country's lifetime Olympic ban for doping offenders was found to be unlawful by sports' top court.

Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish has insisted he will field a strong line-up for the Premier League meeting with Fulham at Anfield on Tuesday, even though the fixture comes just four days before the showpiece FA Cup Final clash with Chelsea at Wembley.

Business

India, the second largest producer of cotton, yesterday lifted a ban on cotton export, at a time when Bangladesh is lobbying with Uzbekistan to strike a deal to ensure smooth supply for local spinners.

Mankind's advancement can partially be explained by the development of our understanding of risk. For centuries, mankind assumed that most events were caused by either evil or benevolent forces. For instance, if a person walked by a field and a cow suddenly died it was assumed the person must have caused the death because they were possessed by demonic spirits. Mankind did not understand the difference between correlation and causation. Just because something happens at the same time something else does (correlation) does not mean it made it occur (causation). Just because the rooster crows just before dawn does not mean it causes the sun to rise!

Fiscal austerity and tough labour reforms have failed to create jobs, leading to an "alarming" situation in the global employment market that shows no sign of recovering, the International Labour Organisation said on Sunday.

A parliamentary sub-committee yesterday asked Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha (Rajuk) to stop activities of all commercial organisations in the residential plots in Gulshan, Banani and Uttara of the city to ease gridlock in the areas.

Attorney General Mahbubey Alam yesterday said the BNP-led opposition has chosen the path of anarchy and indiscipline in its bid to pave the way for others to come to power through unconstitutional means.

A three-day international conference on 'cultural diversity Ministerial Forum of the Asia-Pacific Region-2012' will begin here on May 9, said Information and Cultural Affairs Minister Abul Kalam Azad on Sunday.

University Grants Commission (UGC) yesterday urged the students and their guardians to check the approval of the private university campuses before admission as some universities are running on illegal campuses in the capital.

The Jahangirnagar University authorities have taken no legal action in three days since Bangladesh Chhatra League men beat up cultural activists, injuring 15 of them, while they were protesting the student body's bullying activities on the campus Saturday.

Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) members on Sunday arrested four persons in the port city in connection with abducting two men on April 27 and rescued the two according to the information of the arrestees.

Criminals, angered by protest against stalking of a madrasa girl, made computer designed obscene posters involving her and pasted its copies at different places in Nawabganj upazila under the district.

Suu Kyi said she and other lawmakers in her opposition party will attend Myanmar's parliament tomorrow for the first time and will take the oath of office though they still fiercely dispute its wording.

The race for Presidential election hotted up yesterday with BJP ruling out support for any Congress candidate including Pranab Mukherjee and Hamid Ansari raising the possibility of a contest in the absence of a consensus.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would win an election were it held now, an opinion poll showed yesterday, as he weighs his strategy towards Iran's nuclear program and speculation grows that he will seek a renewed public mandate.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced the country's first minimum wage yesterday, moving to regain the political initiative after violence at weekend protests raised doubt about the timing of elections that had been expected by June.

Arts & Entertainment

Dhaka music connoisseurs were eagerly waiting at the entrance of Bangladesh National Museum as renowned classical vocalist Pandit Ajoy Chakrabarty was all set to perform at the two-day long bi-monthly Bengal Foundation ITC-Sangeet Research Academy (SRA) Classical Music Recital, titled “Mayar Madhuri” that began on April 29 at the museum's main auditorium.

On the 30th anniversary of International Dance Day, a message by Belgian choreographer and dancer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui says, “I like to think of dance performance as a celebration of co-existence, a way to give and make space and time for each other. We tend to forget this, but the underlying beauty in a performance is that it is primarily the convergence of a mass of people seated, one next to the other, all sharing the same moment...And, so in 2012, I wish everyone lots of dance. Not to forget all their problems of 2011, but on the contrary, to tackle them creatively, to dance around them, to find a way to engage with each other and the world, to engage with life as part of its never-ending choreography.”

On the occasion of its 20th founding anniversary, Shilpangan Contemporary Art Gallery will organise a group art exhibition titled “Memories of Old Town”. The exhibition inaugurates today at 5pm at its new premises (House-7, Road-13) in Dhanmondi.

Radius Centre in Gulshan, Dhaka organised a group art exhibition, titled “Breakthrough Artists of Bangladesh”, featuring the works of Kuhu, Md. Tarikat Islam, Nusrat Jahan Nazlee and Mohammad Mainuddin. The exhibition opened on April 10.

OP-ED

Last week, the government of Vietnam hosted over 300 international delegates from over sixty countries over seven days at the sixth International Conference on Community Based Adaptation (CBA6). The delegates spent the first three days in eight groups visiting community based adaptation projects across Vietnam, from the Mekong delta in the south to the coastal areas of central Vietnam to the mountains in the north.

India's Agni-V missile launch, followed by Pakistan's Hatf-IV-Shaheen-1A launch, were greeted with deplorable machismo and sabre-rattling in both countries. But the missile race will destabilise this region.

Yet another May Day dawns today in a milieu where its weight has been significantly shifted from espousing the cause of the working class to being a platform for political battles and a show of strength of a different kind.

May Day is being observed today in the world with the vow to institutionalise the socio-economic rights of workers. Different trade and labour organs/unions, human right organisations, socio-cultural organisations and political parties observe the Day by holding rallies, cultural programmes, etc.

I am, to say the least, sick and tired of our two "eternal" political parties, and I dare say I'm not alone in this contention. We are sick of their politics of hartals, we are sick of their politics of corruption and we are sick of their politics of flagrant nepotism.

Science & Life

Safe drinking water is essential to humans and other life forms. The coastal region of a country has to face tremendous drinking water crisis, as most of the water available is saline. In Bangladesh 19 out of 64 districts are in proximity to the Bay of Bengal. The chief difficulty in the development of appropriate water supply system for the communities in the affected area is that deep aquifers containing sweet water are not found at all possible locations in the coastal region. One of the most convenient options to ensure potable water is to make use of the abundant source of seawater and brackish water. One may think it to be insane - drinking a glass of seawater! Well, to bring down the salinity under specified limit, desalination is widely practised all over the world. Ways of desalination are many. The conventional methods of desalination of salt waters to produce fresh water such as distillation, electrolysis and reverse osmosis are intensive energy techniques. Due to increasing energy costs and declining energy sources, there is a growing interest in the use of low cost technologies.

A Primordial Black Hole (PBH) is a hypothetical black hole that may have formed in the early, highly compressed stages of the Universe immediately after the big bang. According to experts, during the first few moments after the big bang, the pressure and the temperature of the early Universe were very intense. In that condition, simple fluctuation in the density of matters may have resulted in local regions to get dense enough to create black holes. It is thought that due to the expansion of the Universe, most regions of high density quickly dispersed. However, primordial black hole would still be stable and exist till date.

Tiny sharks about the size of a human hand have a superpower of sorts: their bellies glow, according to new research that also showed these smalleye pygmy sharks use the glow to hide from predators lurking below.

Scientists have discovered skeletons in the cyanobacterial closet. A never-before-seen species of cyanobacterium loads its cells with little bonelike lumps that may act as ballast, helping to anchor the beastie in its home waters of a Mexican lake. The discovery, described in the April 27Science, is the first report of such a microbe creating calcified structures inside its cells, rather than externally.

The most transparent, lightweight and flexible material ever for conducting electricity has been invented by a team from the University of Exeter. Called GraphExeter, the material could revolutionize the creation of wearable electronic devices, such as clothing containing computers, phones and MP3 players

Lisa Warren vis NASA/JPLA minivan-sized meteoroid dives through the atmosphere, leaving a trail of fire visible across Nevada and California. The space rock rattled windows over California's Central Valley at about 8 a.m. PT on Sunday, April 22 when it exploded in the upper atmosphere, releasing energy equivalent to a 5-kiloton burst. NASA experts estimate that the object weighed about 154,300 pounds (70 metric tons).

Ambergris Latin: Ambra grisea, Ambre gris, ambergrease or grey amber) is a solid, waxy, flammable substance of a dull gray or blackish color produced in the digestive system of and regurgitated or secreted by sperm whales.